Hopper S212 Feedback and Issues

[jbones]

I have 2 Hoppers and 4 Joeys. I have had them for about 6-8 weeks. In the beginning I had very little problems at all. Now since this last software update(S212) both of my Hoppers almost daily will when I go to turn them on in the late afternoon or early evening they are unresponsive and just show a blank screen. The only fix is to unplug them and do a full reboot. This happens at least 4-5 times a week between the both of them. No problems on the Joeys though. This is driving me crazy.

 

[ArkansasBen]

I have 2 Hoppers and 4 Joeys. I have had them for about 6-8 weeks. In the beginning I had very little problems at all. Now since this last software update(S212) both of my Hoppers almost daily will when I go to turn them on in the late afternoon or early evening they are unresponsive and just show a blank screen. The only fix is to unplug them and do a full reboot. This happens at least 4-5 times a week between the both of them. No problems on the Joeys though. This is driving me crazy.

I've had this exact same problem on a 1 hopper, 3 joey system. I'm watching tv for a few hours in the afternoon on the hopper and I power the hopper off before going out for the evening. Come back 2-3 hours later, power it on and I get a back screen. I have to hit the reset button on the front of the Hopper to get it working again.

Glad to hear I'm not alone in this.

 

[kwintsommer]

I have 2 Hoppers and 4 Joeys. I have had them for about 6-8 weeks. In the beginning I had very little problems at all. Now since this last software update(S212) both of my Hoppers almost daily will when I go to turn them on in the late afternoon or early evening they are unresponsive and just show a blank screen. The only fix is to unplug them and do a full reboot. This happens at least 4-5 times a week between the both of them. No problems on the Joeys though. This is driving me crazy.

Worked fine before but now they both consistently fail around the time of peak power consumption? The engineer in me speculates that they're being overly sensitive to voltage drops. Energy saving feature meets real world energy use and failure results.

That said, my Hopper is running S212 and sharing a heavily loaded circuit and it has yet to quit on me.

 

[pweezil]

My Hopper continues to refuse to acknowledge either of the EHD's from my VIP211k's. Forget about legacy files, despite verifying their integrity with my PC it refuses to recognize that either have been so much as plugged in. A FAT32 reformat did not improve the situation.

Moving past that, I've run into an issue with VOD. Should I mistakenly press "1" or "0" on the Hopper or Joey the system will bring up a message with exactly one option: "Rent"

The absence of "Cancel" both as an onscreen button and as an option (despite the dedicated function on the remote) is annoying but if I was watching a network at least I can hit recall and get back to it. (minus the buffered content....)

The real problem arises from watching a recording when this happens. You can access both the Guide and DVR. "Press [PLAY] to Resume" is reassuringly displayed over your recording but alas, clicking [PLAY] reveals that your position in the recording has been reset to the beginning. Hopper or Joey, testing reveals this problem consistently presents itself.

To summarize, toss your remote in the treadmill's cup holder while watching a recording and thus press the "0" or "1" key and you'll be presented only with a "Rent" option that you can navigate around but can't cancel and doing so will invariably force you to restart your recording.


To those more experienced with the Hopper, might I work around this by disabling the VOD channels? I've searched and yet to find a way to do so but welcome your wisdom.


In other news, I am completely failing at calling up multiple live channels. Lets take the case where I am recording nothing leaving all three tuners available. Lets say I'd really like news so I want to flip back and forth between CNN, FXNWS and CNBC using the buffer to skip commercials and boring content. Alas, I've yet to find anyway to watch more than one live channel on one receiver. Turning on my Joey lets me bring up to two live feeds and setting a third to record gets me to the sweet spot but having to set a series of recordings then go back and delete them on top of using my Joey is a ridiculous workaround to what should be a few smooth clicks.

And speaking of a few smooth clicks, what happens if I just hit [RED]? With zero things recording, only using my Hopper or only using my Joey: it will simply flash back to what I am already watching. The other tuners are simply unavailable. Hopping on the Joey when the Hopper has one going gets a second tuner going but fails to access the third. I can record with all three but live is limited to one per box.

So, once more, oh learned members, am I missing some feature or is this a failing of s212?

You can lockout channels by going to Menu-Settings-Parental Controls and lock both VOD and PPV channels. I had the same problem that you do and it's worked well for me. I don't ever watch VOD or PPV though.

 

[Ghpr13]

New problem with my Hopper...I have the channels I want list as "Guide." Last couple of days, I can't get my local Fox station to stay listed in my "Guide." I go into edit channels, and Fox is there. I check it and hit save, but when I return to my "Guide" it's not listed. It is listed under "All My Channels," "HD Channels," and any of the other "Pre-Listed" guide selections. The Fox channel is there and I can record from it, (it's not "locked out" by me), it just won't show up in my listing of favorite channels. I starting to get a little tired of the many "bugs" that are popping up on the Hopper. The 2 years I had my VIP722k, I had only an occasional "bug" or problem. I thought the Hopper would just get better as time went on, but it doesn't seem that way. Maybe a little of that "suing" money should be going towards fixing "bugs" in the Hopper.

Ghpr13

 

[Jhon69]

New problem with my Hopper...I have the channels I want list as "Guide." Last couple of days, I can't get my local Fox station to stay listed in my "Guide." I go into edit channels, and Fox is there. I check it and hit save, but when I return to my "Guide" it's not listed. It is listed under "All My Channels," "HD Channels," and any of the other "Pre-Listed" guide selections. The Fox channel is there and I can record from it, (it's not "locked out" by me), it just won't show up in my listing of favorite channels. I starting to get a little tired of the many "bugs" that are popping up on the Hopper. The 2 years I had my VIP722k, I had only an occasional "bug" or problem. I thought the Hopper would just get better as time went on, but it doesn't seem that way. Maybe a little of that "suing" money should be going towards fixing "bugs" in the Hopper.

Ghpr13

This maybe a bug.....or retaliation against Fox for whining about AutoHop!!

 

[kwintsommer]

You can lockout channels by going to Menu-Settings-Parental Controls and lock both VOD and PPV channels. I had the same problem that you do and it's worked well for me. I don't ever watch VOD or PPV though.

That's an excellent solution! Thank you very much.


And now for something completely different: While scrolling through the Hopper's guide (holding [down] to be specific) the usual allow/deny recording prompt appeared. Unfortunately my cursor remained on the guide display. Try as I might, the cursor was stuck on a show listing in the background while I stared at the message in the foreground. The system wasn't frozen, my live content continued to play in its little box but the cursor wouldn't come to the window in the foreground. I eventually hit [cancel] closing the message and returning me to the guide. The show proceeded to record.

 

[3HaloODST]

This is regarding installation, but Dish REALLY needs to make Hopper installation easier by preloading stable software that doesn't require you to do a Factory Defaults just to get it to download new software for 30 minutes to an hour. Plus the initial software is very buggy with pairing Joeys and Hoppers. It would really make the installs quicker/easier if they could do that. I set up my third Hopper and I was staring at the 015 screen for 15 minutes until I remembered when the tech that installed my first 2 Hoppers had to do a Factory Defaults just to get the installation wizard set up. The installation wizard could be a little more intuitive as well. If I didn't remember about Factory Defaults I'd probably still be sitting here staring at a 015 screen. Or even worse if I didn't remember not to hook up the Joey until Hopper has Live TV I could be looking at the dreaded 1303... I can't see how this is good for the Dish techs with it so complicated...

Also, for more bugs I've noticed along with feature requests, see this thread :-

http://www.satelliteguys.us/hopper-zone/286126-features-i-would-like-along-bugs.html

 

[randyoh]

I just set up a new timer for Oddities on Science Channel for tonight. I looked at next Saturday and the new episode for that day is not flagged to record. I will keep an eye on it to see if the status changes. I did figure a work around for the 2 new episode in a row & only the 1st flagged to record bug. I just went to the 1st timer & set it to record an extra 30 minutes so I get both episodes.

Still not flagged to record...

 

[bgnewb]

Hi Everyone,
I am posting this here because over the past week it has really picked up in frequency.
I started to watch Jurassic park and was about 3/4 of the way done with the movie when "you must be connected to the internet/no broadband was detected" pops up on the screen. Same thing happened when i tried to watch a episode of breaking bad yesterday. Now this has happened a few times initially when first got the hopper so i thought probably on my end, network dropping or something. Yesterday, i decided to try and trouble shoot when it happened again. i went to look at BB@H and the message popped up. Now i havent been streaming anything at this point. just surfing trying to find something. My network was up and running fine . Went into the network settings on hopper. It says 3 green ok's and at bottom about transmitting says N/A. The past couple times it asks me if i want to interrupt the joey in my bedroom to reset the connection. When i go in there the joey isn't on???? Whenever this happens i always have to reset the hopper. I cant ever get the connection to connect after reseting the connection within the network dx. I have the hopper running through homeplug. all lights were on homeplug and modem. Any ideas or questions please let me know.
This is really frustrating to because with the movie i was watching i would have to restart the download/ stream to get back to where i was

James

 

[Chop-Chop]

I just found this thread. Subbing

I have these main issues:

1.Unable to delete shows while PTAT is active
2. Multiple PTAT shows on Hopper being bundled in one recording
3. Some PTAT shows with Autohopper unavailable.

 

[patmurphey]

I just found this thread. Subbing

I have these main issues:

1.Unable to delete shows while PTAT is active
2. Multiple PTAT shows on Hopper being bundled in one recording
3. Some PTAT shows with Autohopper unavailable.

You can't delete PTAT shows - they auto delete after 8 days unless you had set a regular timer or "saved" the PTAT recording. It is designed that way. (deleting timer shows or saved shows from "My Recordings" does not delete them from the PTAT list.)

If you play a PTAT show from the PTAT list it keeps on plain to the end of PTAT unless you hit stop. It is designed that way.

Autohop does not apply to live broadcasts like news or live sports. It is designed that way.

 

[Chop-Chop]

You can't delete PTAT shows - they auto delete after 8 days unless you had set a regular timer or "saved" the PTAT recording.

I did not clarify but the shows I could not delete were regular shows

Autohop does not apply to live broadcasts like news or live sports.

The shows I could not autohop were not news or live sports but shows like Two and a Half Men, Extreme Makeover, etc

 

[monroef]

When I returned from work today, one of my Hoppers went through the first time setup again. When it did it lost both of my remotes. It also redownloaded and reinstalalled S212. Also, the counter under the tests screen that shows prior version shows ????. Not entirely sure what all of this was about

 

[Chop-Chop]

Another issue I noticed is that the sorting keeps getting reset. I know I have set it to display by A-Z but it has reset at least 3 times to sort by Date

 

[sethwell]

I did not clarify but the shows I could not delete were regular shows

were all three tuners recording at the time, i.e. PTAT and two other channels recording a show? this has happened a few times with mine as well.

 

[MikeD-C05]

I see that too , if there is PTAT recording and two other tuners recording, you won't get to delete anything. Also I you end a program recorded and you don't either exit to a live show or to another tuner that is recording, you can't delete the show you just watched. It will stay glued to the screen with no way to delete it. A quirk, but it isn't hard to get out of it.

 

[wase4711]

well, finally pulled the trigger today, on what I thought was a pretty good deal..

had 1-722k, and 2- 222k's;
am getting 2 Hoppers, and 4 joeys for 100.00 total out of pocket, with free install of course..

Is this a good deal, or should I have pushed for something better?

thanks

 

[isaacmorseMI]

well, finally pulled the trigger today, on what I thought was a pretty good deal..

had 1-722k, and 2- 222k's;
am getting 2 Hoppers, and 4 joeys for 100.00 total out of pocket, with free install of course..

Is this a good deal, or should I have pushed for something better?

thanks

A 2 Hopper system is normally $200. So you got 2 Hoppers for the price of one.

Sent from my iPad 2 using Forum Runner

 

[wase4711]

yeah, they originally wanted 200, but I waited until I had to renew my programming packages today, and asked for a better deal...
I wonder if anyone has been able to get this for 0?